One of the problems of enjoying overpowering success for a sustained period of time is that it’s easy to start taking it for granted, and the recent issues to plague the franchise’s recent installments is beginning to make it look as though the Marvel Cinematic Universe could be falling into that trap.
Having become the world’s highest-grossing film series and then done nothing but extend its lead at the head of the pack, it’s easy to imagine that Kevin Feige and his underlings simply assume that people will turn out in huge numbers regardless of what the quality of the end product turns out to be. In the case of Ant-Man and the Wasp: Quantumania, though, that was shown not to be the case.
That leads us onto the sequel to Shang-Chi and the Legend of the Ten Rings; the opener is deservedly deemed as one of the MCU’s best-reviewed origin stories ever, turned Simu Liu into an overnight superstar, performed admirably at the box office in spite of the pandemic, and put a fresh twist on the standard formula while also adding some intriguing and exciting world-building into the mix.
The downside is that Shang-Chi hit theaters in September of 2021, and the follow-up is a long way away. Destin Daniel Cretton is busy with Avengers: The Kang Dynasty – which doesn’t release until May of 2025 – while there aren’t any projects announced for the big screen beyond May of 2026, so there’s set to be at least a five-year gap between installments.
The MCU’s ambitious interconnected storytelling has always been one of its greatest strengths, but that adherence to formula can also be a detriment, when it arguably would have been wiser to plunge Shang-Chi 2 onto the fast-track as soon as possible.
